


Boneyard

by Apocynaceae



Category: 9 (2009)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Guilt, Non-Human Humanoid Society, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 20:27:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20297455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apocynaceae/pseuds/Apocynaceae
Summary: 7 wasn't created to nurture.





	Boneyard

**Author's Note:**

> Wow this is super short and tbh i dont think anyone watched 9 but  
A character study no one asked for - just needed a change of pace as i work on my wips

7 had charges before. 

Before 3 and 4, before she was consumed by the need to fight. To defend. To keep safe even a sliver of home in a green tinged wasteland. 

The two identical stitchpunks flashed their eyes in her direction. Her digits smoothed over the brow ridge of her helmet. Delicate. Too delicate. She looked up as 3 and 4 clicked forward, ankle joints too stiff. 

She'd need to find oil for the twins, if only so some metallic beast wouldn't easily find them. She couldn't let them get hurt. 

She slid the skull back onto her head. At first obscuring the twin's eyes as they approached. The film reel they had been playing with still spun out of control in the dark room. But these lights were directed at her. Flashing incessantly, a pattern she could understand as they cocked their heads and held out their hands. 

7 flipped the mask up to rest on the crown of her head. She pointed a too sharp digit at them. The metal sharpened, a barely illuminated threat in the dark as she pressed the pole of her javelin blade closer to the corduroy of her loose-stitched thigh. 

"You both are too curious for your own good," she said.

They cocked their heads as they climbed up onto the dial phone 7 had perched on. But they didn't respond.

7 had seen that before. That curiosity. That unbeknownst curiosity. 

They shouldn't trust her. Not to be more than a blade. It was only a matter of time before she wouldn't be able to fight for them. Meet an enemy too strong and brutal. Or worse. 

She preened her digits through one of the blue feathers that usually lay over the number slashed across her back. Trussed as a temporary noose and permanent reminder around the bunched line of her neck. 

She would turn her blade on them. 

She defended things. Defended the defenseless. The twins now and something else later. But boiled down, she was really only ever protecting herself. 

She wasn't a guardian. The side of her rusted metal digit caught on one of the fringes of the feather. She pulled it away and let the feather drop. It swung back to her side and she hefted the javelin knife a little higher. The twins hunched and glancing at one another in front of her, hoods pulled low before they cast a look her way were silent. Waiting. 

She wasn't their guardian. She was just a fighter. 

They cocked their heads again. Now shoulder to shoulder. Heads bobbing, shuttered eyes clicking open and shut, taking her in. Asking silent questions as she watched them, dull and yellowed bone teeth scraping her shoulders as she shifted, and brought the beak of her mask back down. 

She'd been looked at like that before. Different. Much softer creatures by constitution. But just as trusting even when she held them close in her grip, metallic and falcon-like loose and light but the threat of more. 

The film reel danced on, light framed 3 and 4 as they weaved and slotted their copper hands together. 

The twins weren't feathered. Weren't wing-clipped and grounded. Helpless in a toppled and rusting birdcage. But they weren't much different. Eyes turned towards her. Trusting. And songless as the twins only spoke to one another through a dance of flickering lights. 

It was only a matter of time before they joined the boneyard she wore strapped to her body. Of charges she took pity on. The ones she couldn't save. Feather or furred or stitched. 

It was only a matter of time before the twins were hurt.


End file.
